Efficient, reliable, and consistent computer operated insect rearing facilities are needed to meet the insect production demands of society. In recent years, there has been an increasing demand for insect protein for human and animal consumption. There is also promise for the extraction and use of lipids from insects for applications involving medicine, nanotechnology, consumer products, and chemical production. Large scale insect production systems must be designed responsibly to make sure that the insects are freed from hunger, thirst, discomfort, pain, injury, disease, fear and distress. These systems must be precisely sized and situated to be able to provide systematically timed and controlled computer operated methods to maintain a sufficient amount of nutrition, to prevent disease, cannibalism, and injury. A need exists for mass insect production facilities that maximize insect production on a small physical outlay while providing adequate space for high density insect rearing.
The ability to grow insects with minimal human interaction has been long regarded as desirable or needed to facilitate widespread use for human and animal or consumption or for use as an intermediate lipid-based product for the production of food and chemicals. In demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently living. As of March 2016, it was estimated at 7.4 billion, an all-time record high. The United Nations estimates it will further increase to 11.2 billion in the year 2100. World population has experienced continuous growth since the end of the Great Famine of 1315-17 and the Black Death in 1350, when it was near 370 million.
In coming years, nuclear proliferation, food shortages, water scarcity, and diminishing petroleum reserves may result in a constraint on access to food, water, chemicals, and other resources. Famine may result causing millions of deaths over an extended number of years which will mark a clear end to the period of growth and prosperity for the human civilization, industrialization, and globalization.
The global population is expected to reach between 8.3 and 10.9 billion by 2050 which will be met with famine, malnutrition, and shortages of clean drinking water. Further, the succession of major wars, famines, and other disasters may result in large-scale population losses if no alternate source or food and chemicals is immediately put in place.
Thus, it is of paramount importance that large-scale, modular, easily manufacturable, energy efficient, reliable, computer operated insect production facilities are extensively deployed to produce insects for human and animal consumption, and for the extraction and use of lipids for applications involving medicine, nanotechnology, consumer products, and chemical production with minimal water, feedstock, and environmental impact.
There is a need for systems and methods that can clean and decontaminate water from the most-harshest of environmental conditions and provide a clean water source suitable to feed and grow insects for human, animal, and chemical production. There is a need to develop and vastly implement large-scale, systematic insect feeding and breeding facilities that can accommodate the protein and fatty acid demands of society. There is a need to re-use old containerized shipping containers to promote the implementation of widespread commercial production of insects to promote regional, rural, and urban, job opportunities that maximizes the quality of living the insects that are farmed.
There is a need for systems and methods that can produce unique and novel foodstuffs or snack foods. There is a need for unique and novel foodstuffs or snack foods to be created from Orthoptera order of insects and produced from commercially available unit operations, including, feedstock mixing, enhanced feedstock splitting, insect feeding, insect breeding, insect collection, insect grinding, pathogen removal, multifunctional flour mixing, liquid mixing, shaping, cooking, flavoring, biocatalyst mixing, exoskeleton separation, liquid separation, and lipid extraction.